Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Plutarch and the Greece of His Age
was already known by reputation to some of the literati,
and he embraced the opportunity to enlarge the circle
of his acquaintances. Athens he visited a number of
times, and Sparta at least once.
his celebrity in his lifetime, and in
Yet, notwithstanding
striking contrast
to his fame in modern times, he is not quoted by any
extant Roman writer, and but rarely by his own
countrymen.
As a patriotic citizen and an admirer of all that was
venerable and worthy of preservation in the history
no less than in the traditions of Greece, Plutarch felt
it incumbent upon him to discharge both civil and
religious duties as occasion called him. He was a
priest of Apollo to whose worship he was ardently de
voted and to whom he frequently refers in his
works, among others in the De Sera. As a conse
quence he interested himself greatly in the religious
festivals that occurred so frequently in Delphi near
by. It is also plain from his writings that he kept
open house. People who desired to learn, and all who
took life seriously, were always welcome. In some of
the young men who came to him for enlightenment,
whom, nevertheless, we cannot regard as his pupils
except in the Socratic sense, he took a lifelong in
terest.
The choice of many of the subjects discussed
in his lectures was probably accidental. They were
proposed by persons who visited him, talked over at
the time, but afterwards more fully investigated and
the results written out. It this way light was thrown
upon them both by
the oral
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contributions of an in-